We’ve made some major changes to the latest version of the Telstra Smart Home®. This article will take you through the new key features and help you find any settings or options that may have moved.

Touch ID, Fingerprint ID and Face ID sign-in

You’ve now got more options when it comes to signing in to your Telstra Smart Home® app.

Touch ID (Apple)

You can enable this by tapping Settings

Tap Application Settings

Then Use Touch ID.

Good to know: You must have Touch ID set up on your device to use this feature.

Face ID (Apple)

You can enable this by tapping Settings

Tap Application Settings

Then Use Face ID.

Good to know: You must have Touch ID set up on your device to use this feature.

Fingerprint ID (Android)

You can enable this by tapping Settings

Tap Application settings

Then Use Fingerprint ID.

Good to know: Any fingerprint currently saved to your device can be used to unlock the app.

If you prefer not to sign in each time, you can leave the Touch, Face or Fingerprint ID options unticked.

Pin and password sign-in options will still be available.

Updates to My Place

The front page in the app- we call this My Place - has gotten a facelift so that it needs fewer taps to change and view what matters most. You can now update your mode directly from My Place without having to tap through to the modes screen. Additionally, sensors are grouped by type and you can view their statuses from My Place.

Updates to using cameras in the Telstra Smart Home® app

If you’ve got more than one camera, it’s now easier to flip between camera previews from My Place.

Swipe left or right to get a quick preview of your other cameras and then tap on the preview to load a live stream of the camera that you want.

To view all of your camera thumbnails on the same page:

From My Place tap the small icon above the previews to load all of your cameras

From there, tap Preview to view a live stream

To save or delete images or videos tap on the camera to go to the live stream. Swipe to the left on any image or video to reveal options to save or delete it. You’ll then be prompted with a confirmation, which you can deactivate for next time by selecting Don’t remind me.

Troubles

In the top left-hand corner of My Place, you might occasionally be notified of a Trouble.

A Trouble is your Telstra Smart Home® alerting you to an issue with one of your sensors, cameras, or hub. This could be due to a low battery, an offline sensor or your hub may be having trouble communicating with a camera. For more information on resolving troubles, check out this Support article

Automations

Automations are still a core part of Telstra Smart Home ®. For more information about using automations with scenes go to Understanding Scenes.

To create a new automation:

Tap the + in the upper right corner of the automations tab

Choose Automations

Select the type of automation you’d like, such as sensor automation, a mode change or a scheduled rule and follow the prompts

Scenes

Make multiple things happen in your home at the touch of a button with scenes.

Activity feed

We’ve updated the activity feed to be more intuitive.

To view activity on a specific day, tap the date at the top and select the day from the calendar view. You can also use the arrows to the left and right of the date to jump a single day back or forwards.

To filter for specific activities:

Tap Filter in the top right corner, and then select the types of activity you’d like to filter by.

Tap Apply; you’ll see a tick and ‘Filtered’ in the top right corner. The types of activity you’ve selected will display.

You can view all of your activities again by tapping the Filtered button and then Clear all.

Good to know: Trying to find a specific sensor’s activity? Type its name into the search bar just below the date to filter by name.

Hue lights and Roost smart smoke alarm batteries

If you’ve got Philips Hue lights linked to your smart home account, you’ll now find them in Smart lights and smart plugs.

You can change the dimming level and on/off state directly from the tile by tapping on the slider, and the ‘all on’/’all off’ tiles apply to both your Telstra Smart Home® lights and plugs as well as your Hue bulbs.

Hue lights also work in scenes, where you can combine them with other actions to create the perfect setting, whatever the occasion. We’ve also updated how you link and manage your Hue and Roost accounts.

All devices from linked partner accounts (such as Hue bulbs and Roost) will now show up on My Place, rather than in the Partners tab like before.

We’ve added two new features to our Hue integration; Account syncing and groups.

To find the sync button:

Tap Settings

Select My devices

Choose Connect to a partner account and select the account, eg. Hue

Tap Sync at the top of the screen

Good to know: If you add or change the name of a light in the Hue app, tap the Sync button from the Telstra Smart Home® app to update your Hue lights.

Settings

We’ve improved our settings by moving a few things around:

My Usage details (information on how many videos, images, or SMS alerts you’ve used that day) have been moved to Me.

How to use this app tutorials have been replaced by the new feature tutorials

Take a tour of Telstra Smart Home® has been moved to the sign-in screen. To view a demo of the Telstra Smart Home® app, you’ll need to sign out and then tap Take a tour located at the bottom of the sign-in screen.

We’ve removed the Views feature from the app. You can still add additional sensors/devices to My Place by tapping Edit in the top right corner and then Select more devices (you may have to scroll up).

You can no longer view the temperature, battery level or signal strength by tapping on a particular sensor. The app will alert you when your sensor batteries are getting low – they should last about two years. If you have issues with a sensor communicating, you can try plugging in a smart plug between your Telstra Smart Home® hub and the sensor that is experiencing issues.

The option to mute or enable a sensor has been moved from the sensor tile to Manage devices for that particular sensor. Go to Settings, My devices, Manage devices and then tap Manage next to the sensor you’d like to update. The ‘enable/mute sensor’ toggle is at the top of the page. This handy setting turns on or off notifications for a particular sensor when you might want to ignore that sensor but not disable an automation entirely.

Additional troubleshooting help

Now when you tap on a tile, we’ll provide you with the most common troubleshooting steps to resolve the problem. Issues will disappear only once they are resolved, for example, after you’ve replaced the battery or got the camera back online.